Research Team

Jos Twisk is a full professor in applied longitudinal data analysis. He has been part of the AGHLS-team since the start of his PhD thesis (which was completed in 1995). Currently, besides his project leadership, Jos is head of the expertise center for Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis at the VUmc. Jos has written textbooks on longitudinal data analysis, multilevel analysis and applied biostatistics (in Dutch). Jos can be reached via email: JWR.Twisk@vumc.nl.

Willem van Mechelen was born and raised in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After completion of his training as a PE-teacher he worked for 9 years at an Amsterdam high school. He combined this with studying medicine at the University of Amsterdam. After his certification as an MD in 1982 he started working at various out-patient clinics as a sports and occupational physician. He also started in that year his scientific career with a part-time appointment at the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences of the VU University. He earned his PhD in Human Movement Sciences in 1992. He also is a board certified occupational physician and a registered epidemiologist. Willem can be reached via email: W.vanMechelen@vumc.nl.

Trynke Hoekstra is an assistant professor and research coordinator of the AGHLS. Her main research interests concern applied biostatistics, with a particular focus on applied latent class models. Within the AGHLS, she mainly studies cardiovascular disease (risk), lifestyle and mental health measures (cross-sectionally and longitudinally). Trynke has been part of the AGHLS-team since 2007 when she started her thesis (defense on May 13, 2013). Besides her research responsibilities, Trynke has teaching responsibilities at the Department of Health Sciences of the VU University. Trynke can be reached via email: Trynke.Hoekstra@vu.nl.

Dagmar Nieboer

Dagmar Nieboer is a junior lecturer and PhD-student at the AGHLS since 2012. Her main research interests concern the question how different brain areas communicate and how this functional connectivity changes in healthy people. To answer this research question, Dagmar mainly uses the data obtained during resting-state eyes-closed magneto-encephalography (MEG), which is a non-invasive tool to investigate brain activity by recording magnetic fields.